A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. -Lao-TzuBy Sheryl M. and Devon K., CIP Berkeley Alumni ’10

Over the weekend of April 21st-22nd a group of CIP students, alumni, staff, and families participated in the 2012 Relay for Life event at UC Berkeley. Relay for Life is a 24-hour event that takes place at colleges and communities across the country to raise money to provide cancer patients support, and to help find a cure for cancer.

There are two types of fundraising opportunities with Relay for the life. The first is the “pre-event” fundraising. The CIP Berkeley team consisted of 9 members, 3 alumni and 6 current students. The team fundraised $2,516.44 for the event in just a little over a week, and ended up being the 3rd top fundraising team out of 87 teams.

The second type of fundraising is done during the Relay for Life event. The CIP Berkeley team worked very hard on our “Fight Back” activity. Each team had to make a cancer education activity to have at the event so that they could still fundraise.

Our activity, “Wash Away Cancer”, took the much loved carnival game of darts and balloons and turned it around/. Our activity involved water balloons and turned into a matching game, matching a given specific type of cancer to a broader category. At the end of the event, we ended up winning first place for our activity!

The idea of the relay is to have a member of your team walking at all times for 24 hours (think keeping the baton moving), because cancer never sleeps. By taking shifts and turns, our team was able to do just that! But the event was not just walking, there were so many other amazing activities and performances to partake in. There was the Ms. Relay pageant, the car race, capture the flag at 12am (in the sprinklers), dodge-ball, an on-field Zumba class, improv performances, vocal performances, and getting to watch the UC Berkeley Quidditch team practice.

It was great to have other activities to join in on in the downtime when you were not walking. During the evening there was also the Luminaria Ceremony, which is a time to remember those we have lost, those who are still fighting, and those who have survived. It is also a time to come together, to listen to each other, and realize that we are all in this fight together.

The Relay for Life event showed the participants how rewarding it can be to take part in something bigger then themselves. It enables the students to take everything they have learned at CIP and expand on it: being courteous to others, exercising their social thinking skills they have accumulated, make goals and achieving them.

The Relay for Life event was an eye-opening and educational experience for many people on the team; learning how to put up a tent, sharing stories and memories of loved ones, working as a team, learning that we as individuals are capable of achieving a lot more then we give ourselves credit for, but also that it takes want and effort for progress to be made.

Though the Relay event is over, and each person who participated will take something that they learned away from the experience. So thank you to: Caitlin, Catherine, Mitchell, Arbor, Guido, Aaron, Jen, Josh, Sandy, Amanda, and Laurence for participating with us in the event. We could not have done it without you or the support of CIP Berkeley in letting us do this. We can’t wait to do even better next year, at Relay for Life 2013!!

Donating to teams does not close until August 31st, so if you are interested, please email Sheryl at meeuw51@yahoo.com

Creating a world with more birthdays and more bedtime stories, one lap at a time!!